“Then He said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and look at My hands. Put your hand into the wound in My side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!’” (John 20:27 NLT)
To doubt is to be faithless in the area in which we have doubt and the antidote to doubt is to believe. For Thomas he had to see for himself that what he’d heard about Jesus was the truth. He did and he believed. But what about me and you?
And please understand, we can believe and still have doubt, but in order to maximize our fruitfulness, we need to find closure for our doubt. Why? Because, like Thomas, it can stop us in our tracks until we do. To think we can seriously doubt the Person of Christ Jesus, who He is, what He did, how His life, death, Resurrection, Ascension, and eternal reign in heaven affects us, and still believe we can be effective in our life and witness for Him is not realistic.
How can we effectively pray for someone if we don’t have full confidence in the One to whom we pray? Can we in good conscience ask the Lord to do something for someone else that we don’t believe He can or will do in our own life? As I’ve told you before, I begged God to save my marriage of 20 years, but He said “no!” Does that mean I can’t trust Him to help others who are struggling in their marriage? Absolutely I can! But how?
Because in order to have saved my marriage He would have had to force my wife against her will to leave the man to whom she was now devoted and come back to me. It was a price she wasn’t willing to pay, and the Lord wasn’t going to force her. God is a gentleman, and He will not force people to do what they’re unwilling to do.
Which is often the cause of “doubt” in the first place. We may have strong faith in some areas, but not so much in others. I have full confidence that Jesus is exactly who the Bible describes Him to be. He’s proven to me in unmistakable ways that He’s all of that and more. But much of my doubt arises, not in my lack of trust in who God is, but in who I am.
I’m reminded of Jesus’ words in Mark 11:23: “I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.”
That’s hard sometimes. If you remember the next verse in Mark, Jesus put another “contingency” upon our asking: “But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too.” Sometimes doubt grows out of conflict or disruptions in our relationships. We don’t have the heart to believe God for something in our life or another’s because we can’t see past the “log in our own eye.”
We want to believe God for the salvation of our co-workers, while we’re secretly hoping He’ll move some of them to another job. Craig Groeschel wrote: “Never let the presence of a storm cause you to doubt the presence of God.” We don’t have to alleviate every “storm” in our lives in order to put our full confidence and trust in the Savior to whom we’ve committed our lives.
For example, I am fully confident that God is actively involved in my neighborhood, not because I’ve got everything together in my life, but because I know He’s a faithful Father who listens to my heart as well as my words.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 